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Publications (43)
Poor people in developing countries are often affected by droughts, floods, illness, crop failure, job loss, and economic downturns. Much of their energy goes into coping with these shocks and into day-to-day survival. While insurance and credit markets, combined with widespread social security...
Book Chapter
– Testing Theories of Risk-Sharing in the ICRISAT Study Region of South India
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
– Inclusion and Exclusion in Mutual Insurance Networks in Southern Ghana
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
– Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Mexico
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
– Incorporating Insurance Provisions in Microfinance Contracts
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Book Chapter
From the book:
Insurance Against Poverty
Journal Article
Traditional poverty measures neglect several important dimensions of household welfare. In this paper we construct a measure of ‘vulnerability’ which allows us to quantify the welfare loss associated with poverty as well as the loss associated with any of a variety of different sources of...
Journal Article
We use public transfers in the form of food aid to test for the presence of risk sharing arrangements at the village level in rural Ethiopia. We reject perfect risk-sharing, but find evidence of partial risk-sharing via transfers. There is also evidence consistent with crowding out of informal...
Journal Article
– Evidence from a randomised experiment
This paper studies some empirical implications of models with limited risk sharing due to the imperfect enforceability of contracts. We test whether the amount by which public transfers reduce private transfers is affected by features of the economy, such as the variance of income and its...
Working Paper
pdf
Households in developing countries use a variety of informal mechanisms to cope with risk, including mutual support and risk-sharing. These mechanisms cannot avoid that they remain vulnerable to shocks. Public programs in the form of food aid distribution and food-for-work programs are meant to...
Working Paper
pdf
In this paper we review the evidence on the impact of large shocks, such as drought, on child and adult health, with particular emphasis on Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Our focus is on the impact of shocks on long-term outcomes, and we ask whether there are intrahousehold differences in these effects. The...
Journal Article
Poor rural and urban households in developing countries face substantial risks, which they handle with risk-management and risk-coping strategies, including self-insurance through savings and informal insurance mechanisms. Despite these mechanisms, however, vulnerability to poverty linked to risk...
Working Paper
pdf
– The Director's Cut
Traditional poverty measures neglect several important dimensions of household welfare. In this paper we construct a measure of ‘vulnerability’ which allows us to quantify the welfare loss associated with poverty as well as the loss associated with any of a variety of different sources of...
Working Paper
pdf
We use public transfers in the form of food aid to test for the presence of risk sharing arrangements at the village level in rural Ethiopia. We reject perfect risk-sharing, but find evidence of partial risk-sharing via transfers. There is also evidence consistent with crowding out of informal...
Working Paper
pdf
Many argue that poverty is intimately linked with ‘vulnerability’. Still, there is no consensus about how to define and measure ‘vulnerability’. We review theory and describe strengths and limits of recently proposed measures. We then propose a definition of vulnerability and develop a general...
Working Paper
pdf
In economic literature insurance networks are often treated as exogenous institutions. Frequently, the assumption is made that some clearly identifiable group (e.g. ‘the whole village’ or ‘the extended family’) constitutes an insurance network. Still, theory suggests that the formation of insurance...
Working Paper
pdf
– Learning from Visa®?
We examine a simple extension to existing credit contacts for the poor (‘microfinance contracts’), that would allow financial institutions to provide repayment insurance to their clients. The proposed contract uses the repeated nature of loans to build credit records that borrowers in good standing...
Working Paper
pdf
– Testing Theories of Risk-Sharing in the ICRISAT Study Region of South India
Panel data from villages in rural south India have been used for leading econometric studies on risk-sharing in village economies. The work has influenced debate on safety net design world-wide and has driven scholarly agendas on household economics. This paper critically surveys work to date and...
Working Paper
pdf
The paper considers the macroeconomic impact of shocks to agricultural output and of negative and positive price shocks. It is shown that negative price shocks have particularly large externalities: it is estimated that the overall impact of these negative shocks on GDP may well be double their...
Displaying 32 of 43 results